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A CAMPAIGN TRACT FOE 1864. 



Extract from a Speech by Alexander H. Stephens, Vice-President of 
the Confederate States, delivered in the Secession Convention of Georgia, 
January, 1861. 

This step, [the secession of Georgia,] once taken, can never be re- 
called ; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must 
follow, (as you will see,) will rest on the Convention for all coming- 
time. When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated 
by the demon of War, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and 
call forth ; when our green fields of waving harvests shall be trodden 
down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweeping over 
our land ; our temples of justice laid in ashes ; all the horrors and des- 
olations of war upon us — who but this Convention will be held re- 
sponsible for it ? and who but him who shall have given his vote for 
this unwise and ill-timed measure (as I honestly think and believe) 
shall be held to strict account for th^s suicidal act by the present gener- 
ation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming 
time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this 
act you now propose to perpetrate ? 

Pause, 1 entreat you, and consider for a moment what reasons you 
can give that will even satisfy yourselves in calmer moments — what 
reasons you can give to your fellow- sufferers in the calamity that it will 
bring upon us ? What reason can you give to the nations of the earth 
to justify it r They will be the calm and deliberate judges in the case ; and 
to what cause, or one overt act, can you name or point, on which to 
the plea of justification? What right has the North assailed? 
What interest of the South has been invaded ? What justice has been 
d nied, and what claim, founded in justice and right, has been withheld ? 
Can either of you to-day name one governmental act of wrong, deliber- 
ately and purposely done by the government of Washington, of which 
the South has a right to complain ? I challenge the answer ! While, 
on the other hand, let me show the facts, (and believe me, gentlemen, I 
am not here the advocate of the North ; but I am here the friend, the 
firm friend and lover of the South and her institutions, and for this 
reason I speak thus plainly and faithfully for yours, mine, and every 
other man's interest, the words of truth and soberness,) of which I wish 
you to judge, and I will only state facts which are clear and undeni- 
able, and which now stand as records authentic in the history of our 
country. 

When we of the South demanded the slave trade, or the importation 
of Africans for the cultivation of our lands, did they not yield the right 
for twenty years ? When we a^ked a three-fifths representation in Con- 
gress for our slaves, was it not granted ? When we asked and de- 
manded the return of any fugitive from justice, or the recovery of those 
persons owing labor or allegiance, was i-t not incorporated in the Con- 
stitution, and again ratified and strengthened in the Fugitive Slave 
Law of 1850 ? 

But do you reply, that in many instances they have violated this com- 
pact, and have not been faithful to their engagements ! As individuals 
and local communities they may have done so, but not by the sanction 



2 

of government; for that has always been true to Southern interests. 
Again, gentlemen, look at another fact : When we have asked that more 
territory should be added, that we might spread the institution of Sla- 
very, have they not yielded to our demands in giving us Louisiana, 
Florida, and Texas, out of which four States have been carved, and 
ample territory for four more to be* added in due time, if you, by this 
unwise and impolitic act, do not destroy this hope, and, perhaps, by it 
lose all, and have your last slave wrenched from you by stern military 
rule, as South America and Mexico were ; or, by the vindictive decree 
of a universal emancipation, which may reasonably be expected to 
follow ! 

But, again, gentlemen, what have we to gain by this proposed change 
of our relation to the general government ! We have always had the 
control of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as we 
have been. We have had a majority of the Presidents chosen from the 
South, as well as the control and management of most of those chosen 
from the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to 
their twenty-four, thus controlling the Executive department. So of the 
judges of the Supreme Court, we have had eighteen from the South, 
and but eleven from the North ; although nearly four-fifths of the judi- 
cial business has arisen in the Free States, yet a -majority of the Court 
has always been from the South. This we have required, so as to guard 
against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us. In 
like manner we have been equally watchful to guard our interests in 
the Legislative branch of government. In choosing the presiding 
Presidents (p-o tern.) of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their 
eleven. Speakers of the House, we have had twenty-three, and they 
twelve. While the majority of the Representatives, from their greater 
population, have always been from the North, yet we have so generally 
secured the Speaker, because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls 
the legislation of the country. Nor have we had less control in every 
other department of the general government. Attorney-generals we 
have had fourteen, while the North have had but five. Foreign minis- 
ters, we have had eighty-six, and they but fifty-four. While three 
fourths of the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is 
clearly from the Free States, from their greater commercial interests, yet 
we have had the principal embassies, so as to secure the world markets 
for our cotton, tobacco, and sugar, on the best possible terms. We have 
had a vast majority of the higher offices of both army and navy, while a 
larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North. 
Equally so of clerks, auditors, and comptrollers filling the Executive 
department ; the records show for the last fifty years, that of the 
three thousand thus employed, we have had more than two thirds of 
the same, while we have but one third of the white population of the 
Republic. 

Again, look at another item, and one, be assured, in which we have a 
great and vital interest ; it is that of revenue, or means of supporting 
government. From official documents, we learn that a fraction over 
three fourths of the revenue collected for the support of government 
has uniformly been raised from the North. 

Pause, now, while yo\i can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and 
candidly these important items. Look at another necessary branch of 
government, and learn from stern statistical facts how matters stand in 
that department. I mean the mail and post-office privileges that we 



3 

now enjoy under the general government, as it has been for years past. 
The expense for the transportation of the mail in the Free States was, by 
the report of the Postmaster General for the year 18G0, a little over 
$ 13,000,000, while the income was $19,000,000. But in the Slave 
States, the transportation of the mail was $14,716,000, while the reve- 
nue from the same was $8,001,026, leaving a deficit of $6,115,735 to 
be supplied by the North for our accommodation, and without it we 
must have been entirely cut off from this most essential branch of gov- 
ernment. 

Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars 
you must expend in a war with the North, with tens of thousands of 
your sons and brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices upon 
the altar of your ambition , — and for Avhat, we ask again ? Is it for 
the overthrow of the American government, established by our com- 
mon ancestry, cemented and built up by their sweat and blood, and 
founded on the broad principles of Right, Justice, and Humanity it And, 
08 su h, I must declare here, as I have often done before, and which 
h en repeated by the greatest and wisest of statesmen and patriots 

in this and other lands, that it is the best and freest government, the most 
equal in its rights, the tnost just in its decisions, the most lenient in its 
re», and the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men, 
tha' the sun of heaven ever shone upon. 

. for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this, 
under which we have lived for more than three quarters of a century — 
in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our do- 
• y while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and 
tranquillity accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unas- 
sailed — is the height of madness, folly, and wickedness, to which I can 
neither lend my sanction nor my vote. 

Barnwell Riiett, in the Secession Convention of South Carolina, 
said : "The secession of South Carolina is not an event of a day. It 
is not produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, nor by the non-execution of 
the Fugitive Slave Law. It is a matter which has been gathering head 
for thirty years." 

Mr. Iyeitt, in the same Convention, said : "I have been engaged in 
this great secession movement ever sixce I entered political life." 

Mr. Ixolis, another member of the Convention, .said : "Most of us 
have had this matter of secession under consideration for at least 

t\\ i :. iv vi aus." 

Mr. Parker, also in the same Convention, said: "This secession 
movement is no spasmodic effort that has come suddenly upon us, but 
it has been gathering head for a LONG series of years." 

R v. Mr. Prentiss, in a sermon preached at St. Peter's Church, 
Charleston, S. C, Dec., 1860, said: "The United States government is 
about to be destroyed, and another is to be built upon its ruins. That 
Slavery is a Christian institution, and the slave trade a Christian duty, is 
the one idea that underlies our secession and revolutionary movement, 
and the sooner the whole people, North and South, understand this 
fact, the better for us all. No compromise, no adjustment will satisfy 
the South which does not secure absolute protection and permanence to 
Slavery and the slave trade, and permit its unlimited expansion." 



Preston Brooks, before his constituents, in justification of his attempt 
to assassinate Charles Sumner, said : "The issue is upon us, How can 
we sustain, perpetuate, and extend slavery ? The only way to meet this 
issue is, just to tear the Constitution to shreds, trample it under our 
feet, and form a Southern Confederacy, every State of which shall be a 
Slave-holding State. Our only hope in the support of Slavery is in the 
destruction of the Federal Government. I would not have an officer in 
our new Confederacy who would not swear that slavery is right. Let 
the slaveholders of the South rise above the constitution and laws, take 
the power into their own hands, and lay their strong arm upon the treas- 
ury and archives of the Federal Government." 

Alexander H. Stephens, in March, 1854, said of the North in the 
House of Representatives, in a debate in regard to Kansas: "Well, 
gentlemen, you make a good deal of clamor over this Kansas affair, but 
it don't alarm us. You have often threatened but you have never per- 
formed. You always caved in, and you will do so again. We have got 
you in our power. You must submit to the yoke. Don't be so impatient as 
to complain : you tcill only be slajyed in the face. Don't resist : you will 
only be lashed into obedience." 

Hon. L. W. Spratt, speaking of the American Republic and the 
Southern Confederacy, in the Charleston Mercury, and showing the 
difference between them, says: "The one embodies in its political 
structure the principle that equality is the right of man, the other that 
it is the right of equals only. The one embodying the principle that 
equality is the right of man, expands on the horizontal plane of pure 
democracy ; the other, embodying the principle that it is not the right 
of man but of equals only, has taken to itself the rounded form of a 
social aristocracy. In the one there is hired labor, in the other slave labor ; 
in the one labor is voluntary, in the other labor is involuntary. In the 
labor of the one there is the elective franchise, in the other there is not. 
In the one, the power of government is with the lower (laboring) class ; 
in the other, with the upper (non-laboring) class. In the one the reins 
of government come from the heels, in the other, from the head of society. 
In the one, the laborer has the power to rise and to dispose of the fruits of 
his labor, and thus the ship of state is turned bottom upwards, In the 
other, the laborer has no power of rising, and the ship of state is bal- 
anced by a disfranchised class. The contest between these two states is 
inevitable. The principle that " all men are equal" (in natural rights) 
is destructive of Slavery at the South." 

A Democratic paper, in South Carolina, in 1856, said: "The 
theory of free government is a delusion. Slavery is the natural and 
normal condition of the laboring man — white or black." 

The Richmond Enquirer, (the organ of Jeff. Davis & Co.,) says : 
"The laws of all the Southern States justify the holding of white men 
in Slavery. The principle of Slavery is right in itself, and does not 
depend on difference of complexion." 

Who, then, is responsible for this War ? Where is the hope of peace 
except in crushing Slavery and the Rebellion ? The simple issue is, — 
Shall the North be subjugated to Slavery and Slave Labor, or 
the South to Freedom and Free Labor? 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

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